Contents of Cigarette Smoke

At first glance, smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products may seem to concern only the smoker and his own health. As long as the smoker exhibits courtesy in avoiding secondhand smoke situations, the population at large appears relatively unaffected. Yet governmental officials setting smoking bans in public places and substantial figures identify tobacco smoke as a cultural malaise. According to the American Cancer Society and New York Public Interest Research Group, tobacco and tobacco smoke contain more than 4,000 chemicals, more than 60 of which are carcinogens, or cancer-causing agents, that facilitate nicotine delivery. In addition, a person who smokes one to three packs per day at 10 puffs per cigarette inhales and exhales 70,000 to 200,000 doses of smoke annually. These daunting figures indicate that smoking tobacco is indeed a public health concern, and members of society must educate themselves about cigarette smoke's harmful ingredients.

Tar

• Tar is a charcoal-black, sticky substance that contains harmful combustion by-products and is used to pave roads. Burning tobacco produces 150 billion tar particles per cubic inch, and these particles make up the majority of visible smoke's composition. Because of cigarette smoke's concentration, the tar levels in cigarettes are staggeringly high. Dr. K.H. Ginzel, from the University of Arkansas, cites chemists at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company who declare that "cigarette smoke is 10,000 times more concentrated than automobile pollution at rush hour on a freeway." People who finish their cigarettes face a greater risk for tar accumulation because the last puff contains more tar than the first. Aside from forming as tiny particles in visible smoke, tar can also physically amass in the lungs.

Poisons

• Visible smoke constitutes only 5 to 8 percent of a cigarette's total output. Non-visible smoke or vapors that make up the remaining percentage contain many toxic gases that can be categorized as poisons. Poisons that can be found in cigarette smoke include the gas chamber poison hydrogen cyanide; insecticides DDT and Dieldrin; fluid nicotine; the sewer gas methane; arsenic; and the hazardous elements mercury and lead.

Household Products

• Products that you can easily find in your bathroom closet or underneath the kitchen sink also make up cigarette smoke's composition. These substances include nail polish remover, or acetone; acetic acid, otherwise known as vinegar; the ammonia that you use to clean your floors; disinfectants made with nitrous oxide phenols; ethanol; stearic acid, or candle wax; and naphthalene, found in mothballs.

Other Ingredients

• Other ingredients include toxic agents that clearly should not be introduced into the human body and conjure alarming imagery. Among these agents are methanol, also known as rocket fuel; cadmium, used in rechargeable batteries; the human tissue and fabric preservative formaldehyde; vinyl chloride; the industrial solvent toluene; hexamine, or barbecue lighter fluid; carbon monoxide; and the gasoline additive nitrobenzene.